A Poet Who Wants a Change

The Happy Poet

“The Happy Poet,” with Paul Gordon, the writer and director.Credit
St. Chris Films

The sustaining joke of “The Happy Poet,” an indie comedy written and directed by Paul Gordon, is that the poet wants to be happy but doesn’t really know how to go about it. It’s a pretty good joke, and Mr. Gordon tells it with enough discipline and invention to make a significant portion of the film funny in interesting, subversive ways.

He is helped by his own per- formance as Bill, an aspiring writer in the demi-bohemian en- clave of Austin, Tex., who has a deep reserve of starving-artist resentment and has left the workaday world to open an or- ganic food cart. Mr. Gordon makes his diffident, tongue-tied hero oddly ingratiating, to the point that it’s believable when Agnes (Liz Fisher), who’s more attractive and more socially adept than Bill, develops a taste for both his vegetarian sandwiches and his company.

The film’s first half charts thecascading humiliations visited on the passive-aggressive entrepreneur: an interview for a small-business loan that nets an embarrassingly tiny sum; a progression of customers looking for hot dogs; a profound inability to make his move on Agnes. The deadpan humor builds to an agonizing scene in which Bill reads her a hilariously Freudian poem he wrote titled “Chasm.”

From there the movie flattens out a bit, as Mr. Gordon works through plot elements that take up too much space (a business partner who delivers pot along with the organic takeout, a freeloader who turns out to have a connection to a venture capital- ist). The smiley ending, most likely meant to be ironic, feels tacked on. But the consistent comic tone of those earlier scenes — a gentle squirm — makes “The Happy Poet” a promising debut.

THE HAPPY POET

Opens on Friday in Brooklyn.

Written, directed and edited by Paul Gordon; director of photography, Lucas Millard; music by Mr. Gordon, Jonny Mars and Eric Friend; production designer, Caroline Karlen; produced by Mr. Gordon and David Hartstein; released by St. Chris Film. At the reRun Gastropub Theater, 147 Front Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. This film is not rated.